With Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and the rest of the holiday shopping season approaching, we thought it would be a good opportunity to present a snapshot of the current retail environment and how it compares to historical seasonal trends.

• Apparel and department stores in-line with the S&P last week
• Apparel and department stores were -1% over the past seven days
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• Weekly Sales Index: October trending relatively in line with September
• Mall traffic +0.5% month-to-date in October, above September average -0.1%
• Mall traffic was +1.0% for week 2 in October; month-to-date, October is tracking +0.5%, above the September average of -0.1%.
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• Shopper’s barometer—temperatures below normal last week
• This past week, temperatures were 4.7 degrees below normal. Temperatures were below normal in all regions.
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• Weekly Athletic Footwear Sales – October starts slightly softer
• For the first week of October athletic footwear sales were +2%, slightly below the September average +3%.
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• Consumer confidence starts above September levels
• The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index was -39, two points above the September average -41.
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• Gas prices +1% in October
• Versus last year, gas prices are +11%. Month-to-date in October, gas prices are +1%.
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